Chapter 717: Health Bureau

Inside the ten-meter-high single-story factory building, the architecture was still divided as it had been forty years ago. The walls were kept clean, and the top had decorative patterns made of bricks and stones, which were conducive to ventilation.

The factory floor had already been cleared, and basically no production equipment could be seen. The floor and walls were very clean, and there seemed to be traces of recent renovations.

A few large vats were piled together, most of them covered in dust, with a few used for tasks like pickling vegetables.

And in a corner of the factory, where the dirt floor had been dug up, one could see bodies lined up one after another, totaling eight.

Just counting them, Jiang Yuan and the others were greatly shocked.

Mu Zhiyang used skilled praise, saying: "As expected of the capital."

"Starting at 15, plus Zhang Lizhen's body, that's 16." Liu Jinghui calculated, his brows furrowed. He lowered his voice, speaking only loud enough for a few people to hear: "It doesn't make sense. The safety of burying bodies in the factory area is much higher than throwing them in the water. The level of the early and late stages is too different."

With so many people standing in front of the bodies, Liu Jinghui was afraid Jiang Yuan would misjudge, so he quickly reminded him.

Jiang Yuan stood still and also whispered: "Zhang Lizhen's body was the beginning, and this is an evolved form?"

"Then the gap in the middle is a bit too big. From my understanding, there should be a central form." Liu Jinghui said this and quickly added: "Don't mention this point for a while; it's easy to cause misunderstandings. The current number of bodies will likely make everyone very sensitive."

Jiang Yuan said "En" and then stepped forward.

"Jiang Yuan is here. These were just dug up." The leader was an officer from the long-gun troops, and another deputy director was responsible for liaison. He stepped forward and said: "We have arrested 5 people in total, and they just confessed to the burial site here. Whether there are other places and what the specific situation is, we don't know yet."

A short sentence, focusing on "don't know."

Liu Jinghui repeated: "Did the suspects confess themselves? Did they only confess to this one place?"

"The bodies are buried here."

"Is there anything special about the identities of the people who buried the bodies here? How are they different from the ones in the air-raid shelter?"

"Oh, they were collecting bones. That is, bury them for a period of time, earth burial, and then after three or five years, open them up, take out the skeletons, and put them in pottery jars or something in order..."

Actually, there was no need to be very clear. When the deputy director mentioned collecting bones, everyone understood.

As far as the country is concerned, in places like Guangxi, the reason for the special-forces-style grave sweeping is because they adopted bone-collecting burials. And unlike here, when they reburied them, they would specifically choose places with very good feng shui, to the point where transportation was inconvenient, and they had to climb mountains and wade through water.

At the same time, it was also because of bone-collecting burials that they could choose sections with high mountains and dense forests; otherwise, carrying coffins and the like would be too difficult and expensive.

Mu Zhiyang suddenly realized: "So, the pottery jars in the cave earlier all contained collected remains?"

"Plus four, that's 20." Liu Jinghui meant to include the bodies in the four pottery jars.

The deputy director nodded and said: "However, according to the suspects, the ones in the cave and the ones buried here are basically all believers who were seriously ill. En, 'believers' is the exact word."

Jiang Yuan listened to them talking while stepping forward to look at the bodies.

Compared to the skeletons in the air-raid shelter just now, the half-rotted bodies here were much friendlier.

In fact, skeletonized bodies are a huge challenge for any forensic doctor. Even for Jiang Yuan, it is the same.

While skeletons can provide some information, the information they provide is inevitably limited. A self-evident explanation: in a body with flesh and blood, the bones haven't been removed. Theoretically, a body with flesh and blood just provides more information to the forensic doctor.

And for all forensic science personnel, time is always the greatest enemy.

Time can truly and imperceptibly eliminate traces. From the fresh state to the decayed state, and finally to skeletonization, the information lost during this period is enormous.

Jiang Yuan didn't touch the bodies at first, just observed them carefully one by one.

There were eight bodies in total. Jiang Yuan looked at all of them, then chose a few, and directly checked the neck area.

Soon, Jiang Yuan straightened up and said: "As of now, among these 8 people, at least 4 died of mechanical asphyxiation."

"Strangled to death?" Liu Jinghui reacted immediately.

"En, the method was relatively crude, with basically no intention of covering it up. All 4 people have traces of hyoid bone fractures." Jiang Yuan took off his gloves and said: "It should have been done by direct hand strangulation."

Those who need to kill should be able to find out by checking a little information that there are multiple small branches in the technique of causing asphyxiation death. The one with the highest intensity is using a rope. The palace maids in the Jiajing era used this trick, but unfortunately, they were too nervous and tied a dead knot, eventually ending up being executed by slow slicing. But in terms of combat power, the physically weak palace maids could use this to kill middle-aged men, and the intensity was still very high.

Secondly, strangling with hard objects and strangling with hands both have requirements for the strength of the user, and the traces left are the most serious. Some victims even have the killer's fingerprints left on their necks.

The smallest traces should be smothering with a pillow or the like, but this method requires a difference in strength between the two sides, usually used by men killing women, or young adults killing the elderly. The biggest advantage of using this method is that it is not easy to cause hyoid bone fractures, and the concealment is good. For an LV1 forensic doctor, this is a gatekeeper-level problem.

It takes a forensic doctor close to LV1.5 to handle such bodies relatively easily.

Jiang Yuan saying "very crude" is also based on this point. The victims here were mostly old, weak, sick, and disabled. They could have used more covert methods to kill, but they were just strangled to death. If this caused hyoid bone fractures, even if they skeletonized later, it could still be detected.

Thinking of this, Jiang Yuan wanted to go back and look at the bodies in the air-raid shelter. Even if the bodies were sitting cross-legged, the bones were probably incomplete, and the hyoid bone or something might have to be found in the pile of bones underground.

Liu Jinghui also understood what Jiang Yuan meant, took out his notebook to record, and said: "4 people were murdered. If this is the case, it's actually simple. They probably wouldn't cover up the other bodies too much either."

"It's possible."

Liu Jinghui wrote two sentences in his notebook and added: "In this case, the prosecution side is probably going to explode."

After submitting for prosecution, the murderers must be identified. Who killed whom and how they were killed must be reflected in the case file. For the prosecutor, the huge number of bodies and characters involved in this case will inevitably form a huge amount of text and evidence. Just thinking about it gives him a headache.

Jiang Yuan called Tao Lu again to report the preliminary autopsy results. After hanging up, he said to Mu Zhiyang: "Call a few more people to lift the bodies. We'll be busy very late today."

Autopsying these 8 buried bodies might be simpler, but digging them out of the dirt is a much larger workload. The most important thing is to dig out all the bodies, neither confusing them nor missing any.

When forensic doctors do this, the degree of meticulousness must exceed that of the people who buried the bodies, and the amount of earthwork is only more, not less.

If Jiang Yuan were to dig these 8 bodies alone, by the time he finished digging, it would be about next week.

This is also the reason why forensic doctors in county towns often need the help of criminal police. There are only one or two forensic doctors in a county town, and when they occasionally encounter multiple bodies, they really are too busy to handle it.

The capital is different. In the capital, if a room full of people dies, the autopsy center can handle it.

Soon, Zeng Lianrong personally led the team, bringing more than a dozen forensic doctors and forensic assistants to help.

At the same time, the tug-of-war in the air-raid shelter entered a new stage. The white-shirted ones kept going in and out, finally filling the workload to the brim.

"What is our procedure?" Zeng Lianrong was a pure forensic doctor and was too lazy to look into the air-raid shelter, his attention entirely on the bodies.

"Transport all the remains back. Collect the evidence, and then go back together to piece the bones together." Jiang Yuan said very simply.

A group of forensic doctors changed their clothes on the spot, called some criminal police to cooperate, and started digging up bodies, packing bodies, packing the whole family of insects, transporting dirt...

Jiang Yuan went into the corpse cave in the air-raid shelter, collecting bodies while checking.

Compared to the heavy physical labor of digging bodies out of the dirt, just picking up skeletons and the like was relatively much easier.

Zeng Lianrong was considered an elderly person and didn't want to dig bodies either. He strolled in and saw Jiang Yuan "great minds think alike," couldn't help but smile, and wanted to come up to help.

At this moment, he saw Jiang Yuan take a few bones that hadn't been put into the body bag to the side, and while letting people take pictures, said to Zhan Kan behind him: "Record it, there are defensive wounds here, name it Cave Murder No. 1."

Zeng Lianrong rubbed his eyes, leaned close to the bones on the table, looked carefully, and only then discovered the slight fracture on the radius. Comparing the position, it really looked like a defensive wound.

"Injured to this extent, was he beaten?" Zeng Lianrong subconsciously guessed.

Jiang Yuan said: "It's possible he just blocked it. Cave Murder No. 1 was also a cancer patient, with severe bone loss and very brittle bone quality... Of course, it could also be an accidental injury, but in this environment, naming it a defensive wound is 90% unlikely to be wrong."

Zeng Lianrong couldn't help but nod, while shrinking his hands, and didn't move the bones anymore. Originally, he should have taken the bones back to the autopsy center for careful study, but Jiang Yuan classified and typed them casually... He had nothing to say.

Just as he was thinking this, Jiang Yuan again packed a pile of bones into a box, took an ankle bone, and said: "Sports injury, there are signs of repeated fractures..."

Then, he saw Jiang Yuan re-examine the other matching bones and added: "Looks like a professional athlete."

There are many ways to judge whether a skeleton is a professional athlete or a sports enthusiast, but each one—is not entirely reliable.

But Zeng Lianrong believed that Jiang Yuan would not make such a judgment easily, and it must be a conclusion given comprehensively after looking at a pile of bones in one breath...

Zeng Lianrong wanted to understand it in depth, so he pondered how to ask more appropriately.

Whoosh.

Jiang Yuan again swept away a large piece of remains, picked up a few bones, and said: "The bones of Body No. 3 and Body No. 4 are mixed up, which means they were taken out together."

Zeng Lianrong's eyesight wasn't good enough. He looked at the small bones in Jiang Yuan's hand with effort and soon gave up identifying them.

The difficulty of whose bones are whose is too high. Zeng Lianrong had seen people do this kind of thing before, but that was for exhibition matches... Zeng Lianrong now thinks that he is old, and having finally reached today's status, he is just right to be a rich idler, strolling around smelling the corpse smell, which is also quite healthy. ===== CHAPTER 718 =====